Patches, Fixes, and Lies

[monserbrat]

I have played and enjoyed; yes, and cursed
SMRR... enough to lend to the confusion.
I'm just a player in this game, so I claim to be
no more than a gamer.
Today, my friends, I stand humbled before you
modders and programers who tirelessly, endlessly
attempt to resolve the ills of a good game.
It will be you talented and dedicated people
who will restore the game to "function as designed."
With that stated, as well as the many posts
I have read, I believe there exists unresolved and/or
unaddressed issues with Windows itself. Vista users
say, amen. Multi-national entities such as, Microsoft
will never repair or honor pre-sale claims of being
the fully functional marvel of times. Make no
mistake,Microsoft can and has stated they will
repair the marvel, but the customer must pay
to do this.( I remind you these "facts" were on
sites who does not agree with Microsofts vision."

Sorry, back to Railroads.
I have seen differen't anomalys during game-
play. I have seen traintunnels-vanish, as a train
turns and starts re-loaning; the new cars shoot
from front of engine to their place. Ai repeating
exact routine; goods anr/or food are loaded to
train and never unloaded; money goes to nill.

Freezes were a big problem until I did a complete
re-install. The info gained after joining this forum
has help in many bumps along the way, and I
thank you all.



Thank You
Monserbrat
Member since August 13, 2008

[CalmDragon]

Welcome to the forum.
Have fun here!
Each of us tries to have fun in our own little way, and overall, it does seem to work.
Enjoy what you find and thank you for dropping in.

[Kroguys]

I've said it before, and let me say it again. Firaxis( or what ever is holding the money) should pay some of the people here for all the work they have done. For keeping the game alive and not turn into a total lemon.

[d53642]

You have to understand the position Firaxis was in. They are owned by 2KGames and after the holiday season I beleive 06 the team for Railroads! was moved to new projects or left to go onto new adventures.

As one of the testers for the new patches that were being released at the time, the way the game ended with the last patch caught alot of people off guard. We were still expecting 1 or 2 more patches before they decided to move on totally to new things.

I haven't talked to Dan Magaha for a year now but he prob had the most heart for this game from Firaxis, he moved on to NCSoft in Jan 07 after the team was split and 2K was making changes.

Its good to see people Like Warll and Snoop have been dedicated to this game for so long, its still a great game except the bugs just got to me too much and I decided to leave the scene. And without Falconer we would have never had this forum.

The earliest player maps were created by myself before the editor was ever released, alot of good people have worked on this project and shared alot of ideas. So Kroguys I totally think a good core of people should get a big thanks from Firaxis for their continued support to this gem of a game, but 2kGames should give an even bigger one and release a Railroads! 2 or a new patch which I can't see either of them happening.

Daryl

[Kroguys]

So we should blame 2K for abandoning the game, but is Firaxis blameless? Also what about Sid Meier? With a big name like Sid, one would think he could have done something if he cared enough. I know I'm sounding negative here, but I won't be buyiing any of their games till I see some support for their products in the future. Fool me twice shame on me. Btw Go Giants!

[Star Ranger4]

Pretty much... even Programmers have to eat, and with 2k basicly saying they wernt going to pay for any more work on SMR... well, even Sid hizzoneself would have to move on to other projects or not get PAID.

[Kroguys]

Do all the people here that's making the game better get paid? Would it kill them to come to the forum and give us some pointers instead of complete abandonment? How much effort does it take to pump out one more patch that fixes the memory crashes? How about bigger maps and a Random funtion that uses the whole map? I'm not blaming everything on Firaxis. But a developer studio that produces a broken product then gets up and leaves ain't scoring any points with me. I don't care what the excuse is.

[snoopy55]

Do all the people here that's making the game better get paid?

No, I don't get paid, and I do think I have put one H**l of a lot into this game!

Would it kill them to come to the forum and give us some pointers instead of complete abandonment?

If you worked for the research team for Ford F-150s and they informed you that they were going to put you in some other department cause they were shutting down the production of them, would you, on your own time in your own garage with all the research tools you had to buy, just to tell people how to get a few more MPG out of them and other nifty little things to make them run better?

How much effort does it take to pump out one more patch that fixes the memory crashes?

How much money does it take to pull people from bigger money-making projects, slowing them down, just to 'pump out one more patch' for a game that is not even making them one cent? And what are these memory crashes? Playing online? That could be a connection. Vista? That requires a .22. People seem to forget that this game was NOT written for Vista. Heck, Vista is even going to have a record replacement by MS themselves! It has already been pointed out that this game should be run with 4 Gb of memory and 4 Gb of Virtual Memory.

How about bigger maps and a Random funtion that uses the whole map?

How much bigger do you want them? We have 20 x 20 and bigger! If you want a bigger map, read all the posts and build one. Almost everything from every map made has been gathered up and posted for anyones use. As to the Random Function.....why would they have added more program to take up more space to make something that is to big for the maps they wrote? I called them about a year ago. When I asked if the program could be changed, the EXE, they said there was nothing they could do about that being edited, AS LONG AS THE RESULT WAS NOT SOLD! You want something changed. learn the language and change it.

I'm not blaming everything on Firaxis. But a developer studio that produces a broken product then gets up and leaves ain't scoring any points with me. I don't care what the excuse is.

The game does work as it was written. It was NOT written for Vista. It was NOT written for maps larger than 10 x 10. It was NOT written for any Mods!

I bought this game a month after it came out, and I haven't stopped working on it and improving upon it. At times I've run myself into the ground at it. And I've taken flak from every side. Sometimes I wonder how I can be so stupid to keep at it. Who knows, maybe I'm just looking for something better to waste my time at.

If you don't like what you have, either make it better or use it to scare birds away from your garden.

Now, I have to put my dunce cap back on and get back to what I'm doing for this game.

[Kroguys]

I can't believe you guys are trying to justify these people for abandoning the game. I'm not going to waste my time answer every point you quoted. But game did not work right out of the box even on Windows XP. It crashed and froze all the time. More frequent online than off.

And using your own example Snoope. Do you expect to buy a new car and having to fix it yourself right away after you drive it home?

Don't get me wrong, I like the game. Still play it a lot sometimes. But I'm not in denial. I don't appreciate the way I was treated. You guys can continue to think that it's ok for them to ditch us like that. But expect to be treated the same way again.

[Jancsika]

OK guys! The mule is dead and no amount of kicking will ressurect it!
Jancsika

[jayo]

OK guys! The mule is dead and no amount of kicking will ressurect it!
Jancsika

I don't care! I'll keep kicking it until something happens to it! Haven't heard much about what Sid's working on now that Civ Rev and Col. are done, and this hiatus is killing me!!

[snoopy55]

Thank-you Jayo. As I understood it, a forum is for discussing things and giving your opinion, good or bad. There are a lot of things that have been said on this forum that I didn't care for. I look at it like this, if I don't like what is said, I either reply to it or ignore it. I replied to this one because I do what i do because they refused to. So this gave me two choices, plop on the floor, kick my legs and whine about it, or tear it apart and do what I can to make it work better.

I highly doubt that Firaxis or 2K comes thru here and reads these posts on a daily basis, or at all. Some of you know the names of the Firaxis people who were members of this forum, look at their profile and see when they were here last.

Or connect with one of these guys who say they have connections with Firaxis and jump on them to jump on Firaxis.

As to buying a new car and having to fix it, no I don't expect to, but this is not a new car. This game was written to do what THEY wanted it to, not what everyone else wants it to. I have heard so much about this game not being like RRT. If you want RRT, go buy RRT. I would have loved it to work like a model railroad, with the ability to have 8 or 9 different Box Cars on any one train. I would have preferred to have a fourty or fifty car train and a caboose. I would have preferred to have the shadow maps for every car in the game. I would prefer to be a millionare, but none of those happened, and complaining about it to someone with a deaf ear ain't gonna help. Do something that will help. Make suggestions as to what you would like to see tried. When you try a map and it fails for some reason, report it on the forum. I've had SAMs downloaded over 80 times and finally someone lets me know there is a problem with it. Isn't that the same thing you're speaking about? People want to complain to someone on a forum that they have no connection to, but they don't want to do a simple thing like post that a map crashed on them. Sometimes I come away from this forum and ask myself why I bother to do the things I do. I'm speaking for myself here, but I've put one h**l of a lot of work into this game! I've done a lot to make it what it is now! Call me conceited if you wish, but it would not be where it is now if not for me. And if not for STEP Inc and a few people who have assisted us, You'd still be playing maps that didn't work.

And if you're going to answer one part of a post, answer it all.

And if you don't like the discussion, don't read it or talk to the administration and get this and the other post removed, and maybe this and any other threads you don't like the sound of.

[Kroguys]

I'm glad there are people here making maps and trouble shooting the game to make it work. I for one wouldn't be playing this game without the 3gb memory fix, which I found out from this site here. So thanks to the people that brought that fix to us(people that are clueless about programing) and helped us make it work.

As mentioned above, SMRR hardly ever crashed now with the 3gb fix. But without it, the game crashes period. There is a reason why I call myself CrashDummy online. The random feature doesn't work, because the game would just squeezes everything to the middle of the map. Maps are already too small, the random function would just shrink it even further.

I only play online. And custom maps don't work online. You will rarely see someone try to host a custom map online, and the results are mixed at best. And if memory serves, the map editor was released halfassed for the lack of a better word. Because they were going to ditch the game.

I am just trying to make one point. If SMRR was meant to be a crash fest with a broken feature(s) and small maps. If SMRR was meant to be released then abandoned. Then the game is working as intended. Job well done 2K and Firaxis. Other wise the statement is false. Other words, the car was broken before it left the lot. We bought a lemon.

Btw I went to the store today and saw 2 games that I would normally buy and play. Civ 4 Colonies or something and the new Neverwinter Nights 2 expension(Storm of Zehir). I reinstalled Neverwinter Nights 2 and am playing it now with the new expension. Bought it without hesitation. Didn't give Civ 4 a second look. I'm not buying that game, I don't care how good it is.